By one, he was required to invest the parliament with the military power for twenty years, together with an authority to levy whatever money should be necessary for exercising it; and even after the twenty years should be elapsed, they reserved a right of resuming the same authority, whenever they should declare the safety of the kingdom to require it. By the second, he was to recall all his proclamations and declarations against the parliament, and acknowledge that assembly to have taken arms in their just and necessary defence. By the third, he was to annul all the acts, and void all the patents of peerage, which had passed the great seal since it had been carried from London by Lord Keeper Littleton; and at the same time, renounce for the future the power of making peers without consent of parliament. By the fourth, he gave the two houses power to adjourn as they thought proper; a demand seemingly of no great importance, but contrived by the Independents, that they might be able to remove the parliament to places where it should remain in perpetual subjection to the army.[*]
1648.
The king regarded the pretension as unusual and exorbitant, that he should make such concessions, while not secure of any settlement; and should blindly trust his enemies for the conditions which they were afterwards to grant him. He required, therefore, a personal treaty with the parliament, and desired that all the terms on both sides should be adjusted, before any concession on either side should be insisted on. The republican party in the house pretended to take fire at this answer; and openly inveighed, in violent terms, against the person and government of the king; whose name, hitherto, had commonly, in all debates, been mentioned with some degree of reverence. Ireton, seeming to speak the sense of the army, under the appellation of many thousand godly men, who had ventured their lives in defence of the parliament, said, that the king, by denying the four bills, had refused safety and protection to his people; that their obedience to him was but a reciprocal duty for his protection of them; and that, as he had failed on his part, they were freed from all obligations to allegiance, and must settle the nation, without consulting any longer so misguided a prince.[**]
* Clarendon, vol. v. p. 88
** Cl. Walker, p. 70.
Cromwell, after giving an ample character of the valor, good affections, and godliness of the army, subjoined, that it was expected the parliament should guide and defend the kingdom by their own power and resolutions, and not accustom the people any longer to expect safety and government from an obstinate man, whose heart God had hardened; that those who, at the expense of their blood, had hitherto defended the parliament from so many dangers, would still continue, with fidelity and courage, to protect them against all opposition in this vigorous measure. “Teach them not,” added he, “by your neglecting your own safety and that of the kingdom, (in which theirs too is involved,) to imagine themselves betrayed, and their interests abandoned to the rage and malice of an irreconcilable enemy, whom, for your sake, they have dared to provoke. Beware,” and at these words he laid his hand on his sword, “beware, lest despair cause them to seek safety by some other means than by adhering to you, who know not how to consult your own safety.”[*] Such arguments prevailed; though ninety-one members had still the courage to oppose. It was voted, that no more addresses be made to the king, nor any letters or messages be received from him; and that it be treason for any one, without leave of the two houses, to have any intercourse with him. The lords concurred in the same ordinance.[**]
By this vote of non-addresses,—so it was called,—the king was in reality dethroned, and the whole constitution formally overthrown. So violent a measure was supported by a declaration of the commons no less violent. The blackest calumnies were there thrown upon the king; such as, even in their famous remonstrance, they thought proper to omit, as incredible and extravagant: the poisoning of his father, the betraying of Rochelle, the contriving of the Irish massacre.[***] By blasting his fame, had that injury been in their power, they formed a very proper prelude to the executing of violence on his person.
No sooner had the king refused his assent to the four bills, than Hammond, by orders from the army, removed all his servants, cut off his correspondence with his friends, and shut him up in close confinement. The king afterwards showed to Sir Philip Warwick a decrepit old man, who, he said, was employed to kindle his fire, and was the best company he enjoyed during several months that this rigorous confinement lasted.[****]
* Cl. Walker, p. 70.
** Rush. vol. viii. p. 965, 967.
*** Rush. vol. viii. p. 998. Clarendon, vol. v. p. 93.
**** Warwick, p. 329.
No amusement was allowed him, nor society, which might relieve his anxious thoughts: to be speedily poisoned or assassinated was the only prospect which he had every moment before his eyes; for he entertained no apprehension of a judicial sentence and execution; an event of which no history hitherto furnished an example. Meanwhile, the parliament was very industrious in publishing, from time to time, the intelligence which they received from Hammond; how cheerful the king was, how pleased with every one that approached him, how satisfied in his present condition:[*] as if the view of such benignity and constancy had not been more proper to inflame than allay the general compassion of the people.
* Rush, vol. viii. p. 989.